Crete

I: New Zealand Arrivals from Greece

AT four o'clock in the morning of 25 April 1941 the first
convoy of New Zealand troops, on the Calcutta, Perth and
Glengyle, left Porto Rafti, a beach not far from Athens. The
greater part of the infantry of 5 Brigade were aboard (21, 22, 23
and 28 Battalions), the Rear and Main Headquarters of 2 NZ
Division, and 5 and 6 NZ Field Ambulances. From almost all of
these elements were missing, some still with units of the rearguard,
some left on the beach in the confusion of the embarkation.1

Only less serious than the loss of men—perhaps more serious,
since many of those not evacuated made their way out of Greece—
was the loss of equipment. For GHQ Middle East had ordered that
arms should not take precedence over men,2 and some embarkation
officers and naval officers appear to have treated the order so
literally as to demand that the troops leave even their rifles. Luckily
men and officers resisted an order which would be absurd to any
trained soldier and few came away without the personal weapons
they had so grimly carried the length of Greece. But though the
battalions evacuated this night and afterwards were to land in
Crete with at least their rifles and a fair complement of Bren guns
(lacking AA tripods),3 weapons heavier than these had for the
most part to be sacrificed. The artillery and transport were to be
sorely missed.

Few troops at this time could have been so much concerned with
where they were going as with what they were going away from,
and the continual attacks of the Luftwaffe together with the

1This account treats only of the evacuation of NZ troops. It should be borne in mind
that the Navy had also to take off the other components of W Force, and that of these
19 Aust Bde and many British troops were also to be landed in Crete and ultimately
take part in the battle.

page 23
formidable hospitality of the Navy were enough for the moment
and for the average soldier. But, however great the appearance of
chaos inevitable to evacuation, there lay underneath it an effective
enough plan. Already on 17 April a Joint Planning Staff committee
had met in Athens and it had been decided that, because of the
shortage of shipping, a large proportion of the evacuated force
would have to be landed in Crete so as to give the ships engaged
a quicker turn-round.1 In consequence orders had been issued
for the provision in Crete of tentage, blankets, and drill uniform
for 30,000 men and camps for 50,000. General Weston had begun
to prepare the camps as soon as he took command.

Thus, when the first convoy arrived in Suda Bay about two
o'clock in the afternoon of 25 April, there was some sort of
organisation ready to receive the troops it carried. As they came
ashore, in an assortment of small craft, they were ordered by the
shore authorities to dump their Bren guns and mortars where they
would become part of a general dump for future reallotment.2
Then, harried by shore authorities whose zeal did not permit the
unit officers time to sort out their own men,3 the troops streamed
back towards the camps prepared for them. On the way 1 Battalion,
the Welch Regiment, dealt them out cigarettes, oranges, chocolate,
and the hot tea always prescribed for emergencies and almost
always there.

The New Zealand camp, Camp A, was about half-way between
Canea and Perivolia and, like the rest, a camp only by courtesy.
It was no more than a bivouac area. Cooking utensils, so far as
they existed, were petrol tins, and there was scarcely any messing
equipment. And so the first day of the evacuation—not yet thought
of as the first day of a new campaign—ended with weary troops
straggling in till late at night to wrap themselves in the one blanket
which, if they were lucky, was waiting for them.4

That night no New Zealand units were evacuated from Greece.
But next night, that of 26 April, the NZ Divisional Cavalry—RHQ,
A and B Squadrons, less about 150 left behind—the major part of
4, 5 and 6 NZ Field Regiments, 7 NZ Anti-Tank Regiment,
27 Machine Gun Battalion, 7 Field Company and 5 Field Park
Company, and the Provost Company, embarked from Rafina
(C Beach) and Porto Rafti (D Beach). And a group which had

2Not all the battalions did this and their reluctance was justified in the sequel. See
page 28.

328 Bn was apparently lucky: ‘We did move by Coys and foregathered at Refreshment
Point. We thought the people who supplied the refreshments the best ever.’—Lt-Col
Dittmer.

4Creforce to Mideast, 26 Apr, says there were 4000 men on that date with no groundsheets and very few blankets. And the Cretan nights were cold.

page 24
been left behind on the night of 24 April and had meanwhile
crossed by TLC1 to Kea Island was picked up. Two transport
vessels were engaged in the operation: the Glengyle evacuated
Rafina with three destroyers—Nubian, Decoy, and Hasty—in
support; and the Salween evacuated Porto Rafti, supported by
the destroyers Kandahar and Kingston and the cruiser Carlisle.

The plan on this occasion was for the transports to go direct to
Egypt and for the naval vessels to go to Crete, returning thence to
convoy duties. The greater part of the artillery were meant to have
gone aboard the Glengyle and the Salween. They would thus have
reached Egypt and been available for service in North Africa.
This plan bad weather to some extent frustrated: at Porto Rafti
the only craft available to take the men between shore and ship
were three caiques and a TLC (which was busy till midnight in
collecting troops from Kea Island). In a choppy sea many troops
were unable to make the difficult climb to the decks of the transports.
The naval vessels had to use their own boats and take the troops
aboard themselves. Thus only a portion of 4 and 5 Field Regiments
came to board the Salween, and the remainder, boarding the naval
vessels, ended up in Crete instead of Egypt. At Rafina the plan was
more successful, 6 Field Regiment and the greater part of 7 Anti-Tank Regiment boarding the Glengyle and arriving safely in
Egypt. Some 700 troops—200 of them New Zealanders—were
left behind.

Of 27 MG Battalion, the greater part of HQ Company and parts
of 1, 2, 3, and 4 Companies embarked on the Salween. Those that
did not came off in naval vessels and were ultimately made up into
the MG company that fought on Crete. In much the same way a
large part of the Divisional Cavalry left on the Salween for Egypt;
about 150 men, of A and B Squadrons, were left behind, however,
and one whole squadron, C Squadron, was in the Peloponnese. The
main body of 7 Field Company, on the other hand, apparently
came off in naval vessels, for it landed on Crete.

On the same night another evacuation was taking place at
Navplion in the Peloponnese. Here the New Zealand troops
involved were a section of 4 RMT2 and a medical group. This
convoy endured a severe gruelling from the Luftwaffe; and the
medical group, after being sunk with the Dutch transport Slamat
and picked up by the destroyer Diamond, was again sunk with that
ship, was picked up by the destroyer Wryneck, and was again sunk.
Only one member of the group survived. The RMT section was
luckier and reached Crete on the afternoon of 27 April.

Meanwhile the convoy from Rafina and Porto Rafti left about
three in the morning of 27 April, and the section of it bound for
Crete arrived there after the usual hammering from the air about
ten o'clock that night, while the Glengyle and the Salween went
on to Alexandria, where they arrived two days later.

From NZ Division there were now still in Greece the large party
that had been left behind on C Beach from the previous night,
4 Brigade, 6 Brigade, and Battle HQ of the Division. Fourth
Brigade was scheduled to depart on the night of 27 April from
D Beach at Porto Rafti, and there at the due time appeared the
cruiser Ajax and the destroyers Kingston, Kimberley, and Havock.
The last named was then sent to C Beach at Rafina to pick up the
troops left there, while the others proceeded to embark Brigade HQ,
elements of 27 MG Battalion, the three battalions (18, 19, and
20), some of 7 Field Company, part of 4 Field Ambulance, 4 RMT,
and the beach embarkation staffs. Havock meanwhile embarked
those who had remained at C Beach.1

The convoy seems to have got off to a quicker start than its
predecessors and reached Suda Bay before ten o'clock on the morning
of 28 April. The troops then disembarked and made their way
to the camp at Perivolia, where they found the blanket issue was
exhausted.

Last of the Division to leave Greece were Battle HQ of NZ
Division, three troops from C Squadron of the Divisional Cavalry,
part of 6 Field Company, 6 Brigade (24, 25, and 26 Battalions),
and 4 Field Ambulance. These, together with elements from the
British, Australian and Greek forces, were embarked at
Monemvasia aboard the Ajax and four destroyers—Havock,
Hotspur, Griffin and Isis—and, leaving about a quarter to four
in the morning of 29 April, reached Crete about eight o'clock the
same morning.

At this stage General Freyberg2 and his staff believed that the
whole division was to go back to Egypt. They knew that
5 Brigade was on the island but thought that the halt there was
only a stage in its return. When the convoy reached Suda Bay,
therefore, General Freyberg, his GSO 1, and his AA & QMG went
ashore in order to arrange their own onward passage to Egypt by air
and to take the opportunity thus afforded of visiting 5 Brigade.
In their absence ashore the New Zealand troops who had crossed

1Some of these had made their way to D Beach and embarked on Ajax; others commandeered a boat and, leapfrogging from island to island, reached Crete on 8 May.

page 26
with them were transferred to two transports, the Thurland Castle
and Comliebank, and at midday these two ships joined others in
convoy and set off for Egypt, which they were to reach on 2 May.

The troops from the New Zealand reinforcement camp near
Athens had been engaged by a German advanced guard at Kalamata
that same night while waiting for the ships to come and take them
off, and although they had counter-attacked and taken 180 prisoners,
their evacuation had thus been prevented. When morning came
they had no course but to surrender. Apart from these and various
small parties who had been left behind or cut off, the whole of
the New Zealand Division was now free of the mainland. Men
were to come filtering through to Crete by various hazards in the
weeks to follow, but there could be no serious additions to the
strength evacuated.

The remarkable feature about the operation of which this is
only a summary and partial account was its success—as an
evacuation. That so large a proportion of the expeditionary force,
with outnumbering German columns close on their heels and the
German Air Force in command of the sky, should have got out at all
says much for the organisation that underlay the embarkation,
for the troops who took part in it, and above all for the Navy
that made it possible at such cost to its own men's endurance
and its ships.

But, this said, the evacuation had its less fortunate aspects.
The individual accidents, the confusions of detail, were inevitable
in a combined operation carried out by night and in grave difficulties.
But it was unlucky that orders for the abandonment of weapons
were so strictly interpreted by embarkation staffs, and it would
have been worse if the troops had not evaded the order wherever
possible. And it was unfortunate, too, that men of the first convoy
to reach Crete were not allowed to retain these weapons. More
serious still was the misfortune that landed so many artillerymen
and other specialised troops in Crete, where the effort to evacuate
them was to be an additional burden on the administration and
where ultimately a large proportion of them were to be wastefully
used fighting as infantry. And most serious of all was the
misfortune that a whole infantry brigade—6 NZ Brigade—
should have been shipped off to Egypt so incontinently when its
presence with its two sister brigades would later have proved so
welcome.

For these misfortunes the divisional command was not
responsible. Headquarters NZ Division had no part in making the
plans for evacuation and, indeed, had no inkling of the role in
store for the Division. It was not until 30 April that General
page 27
Freyberg learnt that any of his troops were to take part in the
defence of Crete.1